Nat Hentoff was self-described pro-life Jewish atheist

Mark Pattison |
Catholic News Service

1/12/17

WASHINGTON — Pro-lifers mourned the death of Nat Hentoff, 91, who died Jan. 7, as a rare combination of Jewish atheist, political liberal
and pro-lifer.

"It's not surprising an atheist would be against abortion,
because all he knows is life," said Maria McFadden Maffucci, president of
the Human Life Foundation and editor of its journal, the Human Life Review.

Maffucci said her father, the New York City-based organization's
founding president and journal editor, got in touch with Hentoff more than 30
years after the longtime jazz scribe had written columns in the Village Voice
about the "Baby Doe" cases in which two infants were denied
life-saving treatment because of their physical disabilities. "I think
that woke him up," Maffucci said of Hentoff.

He also became one of the first recipients of the foundation's
"Great Defender of Life" award in 2005.

"As an atheist, Nat took much heat from his fellow liberals
and rigid fundamentalists among the 'free thinking' crowd for standing against
abortion," said a Jan. 7 blog posting by Wesley J. Smith for the National
Review, and himself a past winner of Great Defender of Life award.

"Nat Hentoff was an indefatigable writer, a man whose deeply
ingrained integrity compelled him to willingly lose good friends and
professional opportunities if that is what it took to remain steadfast on
behalf of causes he thought to be right," Smith said. "We will not
see his like again."

Hentoff also wrote a weekly syndicated column, "Sweet Land
of Liberty," on First Amendment issues. In 1988, he wrote a biography of
the then-archbishop of New York, John Cardinal O'Connor: At the Storm
Center of a Changing American Catholic Church.

Other recognition given to Hentoff for his pro-life activities
were the Bob Considine Award, by St. Bonaventure University, for having
"exhibited the exemplary moral and ethical performance," and the Pro
Vita Award given by the Diocese of Brooklyn.

On a 1992 PBS public affairs program, "Life and Choice after
Roe vs. Wade," one panelist expressed surprise that a "liberal"
would be against abortion. "I believe in what used to be called the
seamless garment," Hentoff replied. "It can also be called a
consistent ethic of life. I am against capital punishment. ... I am pro-life
all the way."

That same year, Hentoff tried to quiet hecklers at Cooper Union,
a college in Manhattan, who had prevented then-Pennsylvania Gov. Robert Casey
from giving a speech, "Can a Liberal Be Pro-Life?" He appealed to
respect for liberal traditions of free speech, comparing hecklers to Stalinists
and fascists and by arguing pragmatically that they would have a better chance
of influencing Casey by entering into debate with him. His efforts went for
naught.

Rabbi Marc Gellman, of "God Squad" fame with the late
Msgr. Thomas Hartman, said he had been influenced on the abortion issue by
Hentoff.

In 2002, Hentoff was one of many to file a friend-of-the-court
brief on behalf of the Pro-Life Action League's Joseph Scheidler, who had been
sued for damages under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act,
or RICO, for organizing protests outside abortion clinics, arguing Scheidler
had a First Amendment right to free speech. Other briefs were filed by the
Catholic Peace Fellowship, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference, St. Joseph of Medaille Sister Helen
Prejean and actor Martin Sheen.

"We asked him to write for a symposium, 'Pro-Life in a Time
of Obama,'" Maffucci said. "They would come via
fax and they would be typewritten, with notes in the margins. After my dad died
(in 1998), we didn't know anyone who wrote his articles on a typewriter."

The Human Life Foundation assembled a book in 2003 of some of
Hentoff's early writings, including the Baby Doe cases, "Nat Hentoff:
Insisting on Life." The book can be downloaded free through Jan. 17 at
www.humanlifereview.com/hentoff-memorial/.

"I would say things like 'God willing — if "God's"
OK to say,'" Maffucci recalled. "He told me once that he wished he
did believe."

Maffucci recounted she had learned at one point that one of the
Babies Doe, a girl who needed surgery for spina bifida but had been denied it,
was alive decades later. "She got the surgery. She's limited, but she's
happy," Maffucci said. "I called him to tell him the news. He said he
didn't know that, but that made his day."